


the ugly little pieces of you

by starblessed



Category: The Greatest Showman (2017)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, F/M, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Phillip Carlyle’s Drinking Problem, Post-Canon, getting a little darker in this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 17:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13299660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starblessed/pseuds/starblessed
Summary: He has never seen Anne fall before.She’s lost her balance during stunts, missed a grab or tumbled where she should have leapt; yet she always manages to catch herself. She rarely hits the ground. If she does, she knows how to land to keep from getting hurt.This isn’t a slip-up; it is deliberate. Anne doesn’t eventry.She propels off her bar, spreads her arms wide, and drops.





	the ugly little pieces of you

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a Tumblr prompt: “Maybe something about Phillip dealing with his alcoholism? They barely showed it in the movie but he drinks subtly in the background often and I think that a vice like that gives him so much more character. Maybe you could give Anne one too, like how does she cope with sexists and racists? If you end up using it, obviously change it as you like! :)“
> 
> I thought Phillip’s drinking thing was an interesting character trait that went unexplored (Barnum knew to get him drunk if he wanted him to agree to join the show!) so it was interesting to do something with it here — and think how Anne might cope in another way.
> 
> Not really themes of self-harm here, just... recklessness.

The moment Anne falls, Phillip’s own life seems to flash before his eyes.

For a second it is incomprehensible, because he has never seen Anne _fall_ before. She’s lost her balance during stunts, missed a grab or tumbled where she should have leapt; yet she always manages to catch herself. She rarely hits the ground. If she does, she knows how to land to keep from getting hurt.

This isn’t a slip-up; it is deliberate. Anne doesn’t even try. She propels off her bar, spreads her arms wide, and drops.

The rest of the world ceases to exist. There is only Anne in a free fall, seconds dragging on for an eternity, plummeting to certain doom while Phillip is helpless to stop her.

He lurches forward, arms outstretched, hoping beyond desperate hope that he’ll catch her. Even so, he knows he will not make it in time. He catches a glimpse of her face, eyes squeezed shut and jaw set in anticipation.

At the last second, W.D. swings out of nowhere, swiping Anne from midair. She loops her arms around his neck as they go soaring back up. Phillip’s heart goes with them. They swing like a pendulum for a few seconds before W.D. drops, graceful as ever, to the ground. He sets his sister down a second later and brushes his hands off on his vest.

As the rush of adrenaline fades away, Phillip is left baffled. Was that a new stunt? (If it was, he’s certainly putting a stop to it here. Death-defying acrobatics are one thing, but he doesn’t want to have a heart attack in the middle of every show when he spots Anne in free fall.) Then Anne buries her face in her hands, shoulders trembling, and he decides it _definitely wasn’t_ a stunt.

“Anne!” His voice echoes across the ring. Anne jolts, looking up at him with wide eyes. The alarm on her face makes him break into a sprint.

As soon as he reaches her, he pulls her close. One hand steadies her shoulder, while the other cups her face. He feels the way she shudders, and it’s all he can do not to pick her up and carry her away from practice for the afternoon. Instead he frantically looks her over, head to toe, for any sign that she could be hurt.

“Are you alright? I saw what happened.” She doesn’t have so much as a bruise; she’s only shaken. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“Phillip,” she says in a low voice — then unexpectedly pushes him away. “I’m fine.”

Her voice is a complete contrast to the way she still trembles, breath coming hard and fast. She sounds cold — as if Phillip’s concern is something unwanted, wrong.

He frowns, going still. Anne pulls out of his grip and takes a step back, brushing off her arms. “It was no big deal.”

“No big deal?” he echoes, incredulous. “Anne, you missed the bar! You could have —“

Then he flashes back to the moment it all happened: seeing Anne soar through the air, arms outstretched, not even trying to grab the bar. No one under her, no one above — just letting herself fall.

“Why would you do that?” he asks softly.

Anne’s eyes flash back to him for a second before turning away again. Phillip rounds his confusion on W.D., who looks phenomenally annoyed by the whole incident, but not surprised. Phillip doesn’t understand. His own sister just plummeted from midair, and he did nothing, only catching her at the last second. Why would he let her drop so far?

“It’s fine,” W.D. says, tone clipped. “I caught her. I always catch her.”

“But if you hadn’t been there —“

“Then I would have caught myself,” Anne shoots back, rounding back on Phillip with new fire in her eyes. “It was just a drop, is all. It’s a lot easier to let yourself go in the air than it looks.”

She speaks so frankly, without an ounce of shame. Phillip can hardly believe what he’s hearing. His limbs feel cold, veins pumped with ice water. He blinks at her, furrowing his brow as he struggles to make sense of Anne taking such an egregious risk. His fright is beginning to give way to something angry. “Why would you _do_ that?” he demands again.

Anne returns his gaze, even and unflinching. “Gimme one reason not to.”

“You could’ve been hurt!”

“I wasn’t, though. W.D. and I are too good for that.”

“If it was just you? What then?”

“I’d never drop if I wasn’t able to stop myself,” she answers steelily.

Phillip throws up his hands. This, more than anything else, infuriates Anne. She takes one step closer, until she and Phillip are practically nose-to-nose, then narrows her eyes.

“You wanna tell me how to do my act? Is that what’s going on here?”

“Maybe,” he fires back. “If you’re reckless enough to do something like that.”

He sees Anne flare up, recognizes the fury in her eyes. Any other day, Phillip’s self-preservation instincts would have him scrambling to apologize (he’s learned from experience that an angry Anne is more dangerous than an army). On this, however, he holds his ground. The image of her falling out of the air plays in his head over and over again on an endless reel. He feels sicker with each repetition.

Anne curls back her lips; she looks furious yet vulnerable at the same time. “My act belongs to me,” she says, voice hard and icy. “‘Til you’ve been through the things I have, _don’t_ tell me what to do in the air.”

She tears away from him and stalks off, incensed. Phillip can only stare after her in stunned silence.

He’d almost forgotten he wasn’t alone until W.D. clears his throat. When he looks over, he finds the elder Wheeler with his arms crossed over his chest, staring at the spot his sister disappeared through the curtains.

“Anne’s a risk taker,” he says. “She always has been. It’s how she… deals with things, I guess. She won’t let anything scare her.” The way he purses his lips makes it clear he’s no happier about it than Phillip; but this is clearly an argument the siblings have had enough times that he is resigned. “She needs to feel stronger than everything up there.”

A flash of Anne’s broken body lying in the middle of the ring invades Phillip’s mind. Stronger than gravity? Even stronger than death?

“You haven’t… haven’t tried to stop her?”

He huffs a laugh. “Nobody can stop Anne.” When Phillip looks over his shoulder, he finds W.D.’s eyes fixed on him, and for a second the steeliness in his gaze takes him aback. “Believe me,” W.D. says, “you’re better off not trying. Leave what you don’t understand be.”

He stalks off, leaving Phillip staring after him in confusion. He’s still struggling to make sense of Anne plummeting out of the air. The idea that she apparently does stunts like that on the regular, to cope with some internal struggle? It’s too much for Phillip to process. He can’t comprehend someone putting themselves at risk like that, no matter how skilled they are. Especially _Anne_  — who is one of the strongest people Phillip has ever met.

He grimaces to himself and pulls his flask out of his pocket. The burn of whiskey down his throat is sweet comfort.

If there’s ever been a time he needed a drink, it’s now.

* * *

She finds him late that evening, slumped over his desk with an empty whiskey bottle in his hand.

The surprise is sharp and unpleasant, like biting into an apple to find it filled with lemon juice. Anne’s first instinct is to start towards him; then she thinks better of it, wonders if she should back out and close the door. Leaving him here churns her stomach, but Phillip has his pride. Her finding him in this state would do his confidence no favors.

The last time she saw him like this, though…

She shrinks into herself as she remembers the night of Jenny Lind’s concert. After the searing memory of his hand jerking away from hers, the rage that filled her as she danced, Phillip’s mournful eyes staring down at her -- she found him.

She hadn’t meant to. She’d been looking for a prop left upstairs, but noticed the office door ajar instead. When she poked her head in, the sharp scent of liquor assaulted her. She found him then just as he is now: slumped over at his desk, head in his arms, empty bottle resting in his limp hand.

She swallows back her own shame and disappointment. She hasn’t seen him like this since that night. It was about her then, and she’s not naive enough to think it’s not about her now.

She can’t blame herself for all the drinking, of course. Phillip has an alcohol problem; she’s known it since within hours of meeting him, when night rolled around and she could smell whiskey on his breath. She’d stop short of calling him an _alcoholic,_ but is it a problem? Definitely.

It was probably with him long before joining the circus. Anne doesn’t know the roots; she doesn’t know every demon that haunts her lover’s head. She does know that Phillip’s childhood was an unhappy one. He grew up sheltered and conservative, until he was sent to prep school and grew determined to be everything but.

Since he joined their family, however, the drinking seemed to have reduced drastically. Though they’ve never talked about it, she catches him taking surreptitious sips from his flash less and less. Most nights, he goes to bed clear-eyed. The show keeps him so busy, and happy, that she supposes the void that kept him leaning on alcohol has been filled.

Still. A problem is a problem.

“Oh, honey,” she mutters. Phillip doesn’t stir as she slides the empty bottle from his hand. (He must have stashed this in his office -- does he have more hidden away?) His face is scrunched up as if he’s dreaming something bad, cheek smushed atop a pile of paperwork. She sighs, running her fingers through her hair, and debates waking him.

She remembers his eyes from this afternoon -- wide and hurt, terrified beyond belief that she could have been injured. She hears the anger in his voice all over again, feels an echo of the rage that burned inside her as she stalked away from him.

He can’t understand. Nothing will ever let him understand how few ways she has of taking her anger out on the world.

That doesn’t mean she’s happy his confusion brought him _here._

“Alright,” she sighs. Gently, she slides the papers out from under his head and rearranges them in a neat stack. She tosses the empty bottle in the wastebin, drapes Phillip’s jacket over her shoulder, and finally shakes him awake.

“C’mon, baby. Wake up. You need to wake up, Phillip, you have to get to bed.”

He lets out an incoherent mumble, turning his head away from her. She huffs, jarring him more insistently until he forces his eyes open.

“Wha’s is… whassat…” He blinks at her blearily, struggling to focus his hazy mind. Whether it’s drowsiness or drink, she doesn’t know, but she’s pretty sure he doesn’t even recognize her.

She sees the moment it clicks. His face lights up, the tension easing out of it all at once. He exhales in a great rush. “Anne.”

“Hey,” she says, rubbing her hand over his shoulder. He’s swaying in his seat a little, which doesn’t bode well for his chances of walking. “You wanna get out of here, or would you rather stay passed out on that desk all night?”

Phillip’s head swivels between the desk and her. She sees the moment he remembers how he ended up here in the first place -- and doesn’t miss the shame that passes over his face, either.

“I --” He starts, and lets out another huff of air. “‘M sorry. Anne, I… didn’ mean to. To fall asleep. Think I’m not feelin’ well tonight…”

So _that’s_ what he calls getting too drunk to sit up straight. She huffs, forcing the irritation off her face (she can’t be mad at him for this, she _knows_ how hard he’s been trying to get better) and holds out her hand to him instead.

“C’mon,” she says. “Let’s get you to bed.”

This is a task easier said than done. Phillip, as it turns out, _can’t_ stand up straight. He can’t walk on his own without falling over, either. Since he is not a light man, it takes some maneuvering before the two of them are finally on their way out the door.

“The others,” Phillip slurs (while Anne is more focused on their precarious descent down the stairs). “Don’t want ‘em to see me like this…”

“Everyone’s in their own tents asleep, anyway. It’s late.”

Phillip accepts this for what it is, and refocuses his energy on making it down the stairs in one piece. It’s only once they’re back on solid ground that he speaks again. “You’re not. Sleeping, I mean.”

“I’m not,” Anne confirms.

 _“Why_ not?”

To be honest, she couldn’t sleep. The conversation with Phillip was haunting her, and she couldn’t get the feeling of that free fall out of her head. The terrible frustration still gnawed at the edges of her consciousness, but it wasn’t half as strong now. She could ignore it.

“Just didn’t feel like it,” she replies instead, helping Phillip out of the tent. The fairgrounds are quiet late at night -- it’s almost eerie. Anne felt the same uneasy sensation as she walked through them to reach Phillip’s office, but it’s a little more bearable when she isn’t alone.

Phillip owns an apartment somewhere in the city, but he also has his own tent, and most nights he winds up sleeping there. Anne knows the way there better than she knows how to reach his office. Everyone knows to find Phillip in his office; but Anne is the only other person who’s seen Phillip where he’s most at home.

His tent is organized chaos, as usual. She almost stumbles over the boots he’s left in front of the flap, but catches herself (thankfully -- if she went down, Phillip would go with her). Finally hauling him into bed is a relief.

“I’ve gotta say,” she huffs, panting from the exertion of carrying him so far. “Next time we do this, we should ride an elephant.”

“There’s not gonna be a next time.” Phillip interjects fiercely. He sounds a little clearer -- he’s not slurring so bad, at least -- and is even able to tug his boots off on his own. When he gets to the shirt, however, he has a little trouble. Anne has to help him, undoing the buttons one by one.

“I seem to recall last time I was undressing you,” she murmurs, “it was under far more _pleasant_ circumstances.”

Phillip heaves another sigh. “I’m sorry,” he mutters, hand coming up to rest on the back of her neck. “I didn’t -- I’m so stupid, I should have had more control. You shouldn’t… shouldn’t see me this way. You deserve better.”

“I deserve to not have to carry you ‘cross a fairground, yeah,” she interjects, brushing unruly hair out of his face. “And I deserve to know that you’re healthy. Not doing… this to yourself.” She sighs, pressing a kiss to his forehead, and allows her lips to linger there for a moment. When she pulls back, there’s guilt on her own face. “Can I just ask you something?”

“Mmm,” replies Phillip. “Anything.”

“Did you do this tonight because of what I did today?”

For a long time, he stares at her. He looks disconcertingly sober, to the point where she feels like she’s the one being stipped down under his intense gaze. When she allows his shirt to slide off his shoulders, he makes no move to discard it.

“I just don’t understand,” he says finally. “Why you did it.”

Anne sighs and settles down on the bed next to him. This is going to be a difficult conversation; she wishes he was sober for it.

“I don’t wanna hurt myself,” she begins, “so don’t think that. I don’t wanna hurt anybody else, either. I know if something happened to me you’d be hurting, and that… that’s not something I like to think about.”

“Then why?” he whispers, leaning closer to her. She brings a hand up to his back and rubs in small, slow circles.

“You’ve never had a stranger look at you like they own you. You’ve never had someone tell you what you’re worth just ‘cause of the color of your skin, or that you wear a dress instead of pants. You’ve never had to feel like your body’s not your own, just a tool for other people to use, then throw away when they don’t wanna look at it anymore. You can’t… can’t _understand_ what it’s like to feel like you don’t have any say over what happens to you.”

“I’ve felt like that before,” he says softly. “But you’re right. I can’t understand. Not like you can.”

Anne swallows. “To feel that rush -- that drop, that _risk,_ to know that I’m in total control of what happens to me… if I wanna catch myself, or fall. That drop is like nothing else in the world. And it… it makes me feel like I’m in control. That rush terrifies me, but I feel like I can do anything with it.”

“You feel like you belong to you.”

“Exactly.” She sighs and closes her eyes. “Do you get it?”

He leans his weight against her side; she feels his head rest on his shoulder. “Yeah,” he answers. “I think I do.”

There’s no easy way to explain why they do the things they do. There’s no way to justify the wicked things they’re drawn to. They can’t pretend they’re harmless. They can’t pretend they don’t hurt. Anne knows there is no way she can stop Phillip from drinking, just as he seems to understand that she needs her tiny piece of danger.

Maybe they’re better people for their sins. Maybe it just makes them _people,_ in all their ridiculous complexity. Maybe they can’t really understand each other, and this is as close as they can get. Maybe they can only lick each others’ wounds afterwards.

Or perhaps, muses Anne, there is just one thing they _can_ do: support each other through it all.

If a day comes where Anne no longer hears the frustrated whisper urging her to let go of the bar and drop, when Phillip no longer reaches for his flask…

That day will be well-earned.

“C’mon,” she says, and eases him down on the bed. “You better go to sleep.”

He makes no protest — except to wrap his arms around her shoulders and pull her down with him.

She winds up spending the night curled against him, head resting on his chest, hand combing through his soft hair. When they wake up the next morning, neither of them say anything about the night before.


End file.
